


Dance So I Don't Have To Think

by inlovewithnight



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-10
Updated: 2009-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-18 05:05:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Dance So I Don't Have To Think

The weather in Los Angeles, especially in the middle of May, creates a certain level of incentive to order iced drinks at Starbucks. Mikey is a purist, though. His tongue has longstanding dead spots from years of being burned by his coffee, and he intends to keep it that way.

So he drinks his coffee hot while he waits, squinting out at the street and wishing he'd thought to grab his sunglasses. He planed ahead for LA, he bought prescription glasses. And then today he left them in his room.

He's fixating on the little things so he won't look at the big ones. He is aware of that. His therapist says it's not necessarily unhealthy, but he needs to be aware.

He's used to being aware, raw and painfully aware, but that's _aware of everything else_ , of what's outside of him, not the inside of his head. Being aware of what's going on in there is like getting caught in feedback.

He twists a napkin between his fingers and blinks down at the table top. Pete is late, of course. Mikey expected him to be. It's nothing new.

Then again, Mikey's information is a little out of date. They haven't talked much. They haven't...well. They haven't talked.

The door swings open and Mikey squints over the rim of his glasses and yes, that's Pete, he knows Pete's blurry half-focused silhouette. Pete stands in the doorway for a long moment and Mikey raises his hand in a cautious wave.

"Hey," Pete says, and nods at the counter. Mikey nods back, taking another sip of his own coffee both for the comfort of the taste and because he can hide behind the cup a little. This was a stupid goddamn idea. He's three weeks out of a breakdown, what an awesome time for coffee with his ex.

But then Pete shuffles over to the table with his triple espresso with too many flavorings and says "Jesus, I fucking hate the coffee cake they're selling now, they used to have better ones, remember?" and Mikey is reminded that he actually did have a reason to call Pete, yes. Because Pete is familiar with breakdown territory, he has a good handle on the landscape. And so he doesn't ask Mikey how he is, he doesn't get all weird or mumble cliches. He flops down in his chair like a sulky toddler and he bitches about coffee cake.

"And cupcakes. Some of them have cupcakes, some don't. I can't figure out the pattern. Sometimes I just want a fucking cupcake." Pete's wearing huge sunglasses that don't just hide his eyes, but half of his face. He takes a drink, sucking the coffee noisily between his teeth. "Mikey Way."

Mikey curls the fingers of one hand around the edge of the table, the other around his coffee cup. "That's me."

"Been a while." Pete takes his sunglasses off and sets them in the middle of the table, arranging them carefully so they're staring back at him and reflecting the outside light. "You cut your hair."

"Yeah." His fingers twitch to reach up and touch it, but he grips the table tighter. "It was...yeah."

"Cool." Pete takes another drink and Mikey looks at him, lets his eyes wander and linger more than he should. Pete looks awful; more exhausted than usual, he did a shitty job shaving, and there's a bitter twist to his mouth even just sitting here.

Mikey knows why. Everybody knows why. But if Pete's not going to make him uncomfortable by offering an engraved _welcome to crazy-land_ card, Mikey won't rub his face in his problems, either.

Instead he kicks Pete, lightly, under the table. Pete looks up, startled, and Mikey wrinkles his nose at him. After a moment Pete actually smiles.

"Mikey Way," he says again, softly, and some of the tension goes out of his shoulders. "It's good to see you, dude."

"Good to see you too," Mikey says, and he means it. He thought this would be awkward, hoped for amicable, but actually seeing Pete brings an echo of heat and dust and summer sunlight into his head, and maybe that's exactly what he needs right now.

Pete's phone buzzes and he digs it out of his pocket. Mikey looks away, watching cars move down the street and trying not to think about anything. It's getting easier.

Pete snaps the phone closed with excessive force. Mikey glances at him, sideways rather than head-on, giving him the courtesy of imaginary space if he wants it. Pete rolls the phone between this fingers and scowls at it.

"You're probably not hungry, huh?" he asks abruptly, giving Mikey the same kind of sideways look. Mikey wonders if he learned it from Pete in the first place, or if it's just a thing that develops independently. "The first couple of weeks are always...you want to get out of here?"

Mikey's been good at living on coffee since long before he had meds to worry about. "Where did you have in mind?"

He watches how Pete's eyes flicker from his phone to the door to his hands on the table top. Pete is never still. Mikey used to cover Pete's hands with his, press them down against something until he could feel the pulse pounding in them. "I've got a place, while I'm out here. It's not great, but it's more private than this."

Mikey raises an eyebrow at him, not quite sure if he wants to smile. "We need privacy?"

The look Pete shoots him starts out confused and falls down through shades of blue until it hits pissed off with a twist of hurt feelings. "I just thought...I wasn't fucking _implying_ anything."

"I know." Mikey bites his lower lip to keep from sighing. This is what they were never going to get right, even if they'd kept trying; the amount of time they spend talking past each other. "Neither was I. I was making a joke."

"Oh." Pete rubs his eyes with the back of his hand and picks up his phone again. Mikey's fingers itch to take it away from him. "Oh. Well...whatever. You want to stay here, we can stay here."

If he had taken the phone, this is where Mikey would throw it at Pete's head. Petulant, sulky fucker. Mikey gets enough of that from...everyone else he knows. _Musicians_. "It's cool. Let's go."  
**  
Pete's little rented house is entirely white. Carpet, walls, ceiling, furniture. "You live inside the Cube," Mikey says, staring around the living room. "Doesn't it freak you out?"

Pete follows Mikey's gaze and snorts. "I will admit that I've considered opening a vein just to break up the view a little."

Pete says shit like that to make people flinch. Mikey never does. "Where's Hemmy?"

"I left him with my parents. I'm only here for a few weeks this time, I'll bring him back with me when we start recording."

Mikey's stomach twists. When they start recording, the other guys are going to have their hands around the songs and he's going to be walking blind, because he couldn't keep it together for that last little stretch. His therapist keeps telling him he should be proud of himself for walking away despite that pressure. A whole twenty percent of the time, he manages it.

"You want anything?" Pete asks, and Mikey blinks at him, lost. "I've got...water. Red Bull. Um, maybe cereal or something. I don't know. I could order in."

"The whole reason we came back here was that neither of us was hungry," Mikey reminds him.

"Right." Pete flops down on the couch, his feet an inch above the floor when he holds them flat, the heels just touching if he drops them. Like a kid. "Just minding my manners."

Mikey smiles a little at that, but he doesn't tease. He sits on the arm of the couch and toes off his shoes, kicking them over to the side so he doesn't see them breaking up the blankness of the carpet. "I think they were advertising a CSI marathon earlier."

"You watch that show?" It's hard to tell if Pete is mocking or just surprised, so Mikey shrugs and curves one of his feet up onto the couch cushion. "Doesn't it freak you out a little, the way it's like a big list of all the ways you can end up dead?"

Mikey shrugs again. "It's predictable. That's kind of nice. And I like Grissom."

Pete grins and punches him in the thigh. "Yeah, you would. Sit down right, Mikey Way. I'll watch the death list with you."

Mikey obediently slides down onto the cushion next to Pete, who flips through the channels until he finds it. And they just...sit there. They watch three hours of Nick and Catherine and Gil and Greg and Sarah collecting evidence and violating a wide variety of rights of the accused and awkwardly flirting with each other, and they barely say anything to each other at all.

Mikey hasn't relaxed this much in...ages. It's awesome.  
**  
Sometime near the beginning of episode four he falls asleep, tucked back into the side of Pete's couch, and when he wakes up again the TV is showing some insanely dumb movie and Pete's head is settled against Mikey's shoulder. Mikey can't tell if he's asleep or not. It's peaceful, sitting like this. Mikey tries to reach for the remote without dislodging Pete, but there's really no way to do it without rotating his shoulder. Stuck with the movie, then.

"I'm awake," Pete mumbles, then sniffs, and Mikey glances down at him.

"Did you drool on me?"

"Little bit." Pete sits up and rubs his eyes with the back of his hand. "You'll dry out."

"You're gross."

"Yeah, what else is new." Pete smiles, but it's as flat as his voice. "There are pictures of my dick on the Internet, you might have heard about those?"

Mikey just keeps looking at him, and after a minute some of the combativeness goes out of Pete; his shoulders drop a little and he averts his eyes, taking a deep breath.

"This movie sucks," Mikey says.

"It does." Pete kicks at the coffee table. "They show it like once a week."

Mikey bumps Pete with his shoulder. "And you watch it every time?"

Pete smiles again, different this time, not his sharp-edged overly-bright manic grin but a slight curve of his mouth that Mikey remembers from summer afternoons. Shared secrets and the sweet sting of sunburn under fingertips.

"Half the time," Pete says, then laughs when Mikey snorts. "Maybe two-thirds, okay."

"Three-quarters," Mikey says, and Pete laughs again, turning to face him. He reaches out and Mikey lets him catch his wrists and pin them to the couch, only raising an eyebrow as Pete moves in closer.

"Mikey Way," Pete says softly. Mikey shrugs slightly. Yes, that's him. "Couldn't believe you called me."

Mikey looks down at his wrists under Pete's hands. "In a good way or a bad way?"

"Just was surprised." Pete's shoulders lift and fall slightly. "You know. It's been...you know."

Mikey does know. He flexes his fingers slightly, curling them to his palms. "I figured that you've been there, you know? Been...here. You know what it feels like."

"Yeah." Pete lets go, his fingers easing away from Mikey's tendons feather-light. "Yeah, I..."

Mikey wants to tell him not to, but that isn't what they do, they don't hold one another to things. He should clear his throat, change the subject, bring some light into the room. He licks his lips and opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, Pete's mouth is pressed against his.

There are very good reasons why they don't do this, lots of them, but Mikey opts not to care. He closes his eyes and kisses Pete back, letting his hands find Pete's hips. Kissing, touching, an anchor in his body instead of in his head, even if it's just for a minute--maybe this is the reason he called, maybe this is what he was looking for. Along with everything else Pete is, and Mikey could spend a year trying to make _that_ list, he is tactile and physical and warm, and thank God for it.

Pete whispers something against his mouth and Mikey shakes his head in silent indication that he can't hear him, doesn't quite understand. It doesn't matter. Pete gets in trouble saying too much, thinking too much, digging himself in when he doesn't have to. Mikey doesn't want that to happen here. Just let there be a few minutes where everything is shapeless and untitled and good.

Pete's hands slide up and down Mikey's arms, warm and softer than they should be. Mikey lets his own hands wander the curve of Pete's back. Pete's mouth is hot, his lips dry, his teeth catching on Mikey's lower lip between kisses. Mikey keeps his eyes closed and wonders, just a little, what it is about this that makes some of the ache in his chest go away, the memories or the contact.

Mikey lets his hands drift down again, grazing Pete's sides and then across the front of his jeans, just tracing the outline of Pete's dick with his fingertips. Pete makes a rough noise and pulls back, and Mikey lets his hand fall to the couch.

"Sorry," Pete says breathlessly. "Sorry. I just...I think it might be a bad idea. Right now. Today."

"It was an accident," Mikey says stupidly, and Pete's mouth falls open a little, confusion crossing his face briefly before his expression settles on mortified, and Mikey shakes his head, reaching up to touch his face gently. "I mean, I agree. Bad idea, today."

Only a little bit of embarrassment eases away, but Pete doesn't pull away from Mikey's touch, and after a minute he laughs a little. "What the hell, dude," he whispers, leaning in and kissing Mikey's forehead, twice, just above each eye. "What the hell are we, anyway?"

"Not a clue," Mikey answers honestly. "Not a single one."

"We should order something," Pete says, moving away and getting carefully to his feet, his hand automatically sliding down to his pocket in search of his phone. "Some kind of food, watch something better than this?"

"Yeah." Mikey watches him start to fidget and pace, fingers moving restlessly over the keys as he scrolls through the messages on his phone. "That sounds good."

"Awesome. I've got some menus in the kitchen, I'll get those, do you want anything to drink?" Pete's already moving toward the door and Mikey bites back a sigh as he shakes his head.

He surprises himself by speaking; maybe it's the echo of those fragile moments of peace. "Pete?"

He pauses and looks back over his shoulder. "Yeah?"

Words aren't Mikey's thing. He doesn't want them to be; it seems like they get dangerous sometimes. He shrugs and swallows and just says "Hurry back."

Pete looks surprised again, then smiles. "Course," he says. "Won't even have time to miss me."  



End file.
